GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH
GIANT PATCH OF OCEAN DEBRIS CARRIES PLASTIC GHOST NETS, TRASH ONTO ISLAND SHORES
Agulhas
North
Norwegian Atlantic
Drift
South
Equatorial Equatorial
Counter
Benguela
Canary
South
Atlantic
Gyre
North
Atlantic
Gyre
East
Greenland
Labrador
Gulf Stream
North
Equatorial
Indian
Ocean
Gyre
Antarctic
Circumpolar
Antarctic
Subpolar
Brazil
Peru
Equatorial
Counter
South
Equatorial
West
Australia
South
Pacific
Gyre
California
North
Equatorial
Mozambique
South
Pacific
South
Equatorial
East
Australia
Alaska
North
Equatorial
North
Pacific
Equatorial
Counter
North Pacific Gyre
Oyashio
Warm Current
Cold Current
PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
is a collection of marine debris in
the North Pacific Ocean. Marine
debris is litter that ends up in
oceans, seas, and other large
bodies of water.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch,
also known as the Eastern Pacific
Garbage Patch and the Pacific
Trash Vortex, lies in a high-pressure area between the U.S.
states of Hawaii and California.
This area is in the middle of the
North Pacific Subtropical Gyre.
The motion of the gyre prevents
garbage and other materials
from escaping and its accumulates because much of it is not
biodegradable: many plastics,
for instance, do not wear down;
they simply break into tinier and
tinier pieces.
For many people, the idea of a
“garbage patch” conjures up
images of an island of trash
floating on the ocean. In reality,
these patches are usually made
up of tiny bits of plastic, called
microplastics. Microplastics that
make up the majority of garbage
patches can’t always be seen by
the naked eye.
The vast majority of marine
debris is plastic. Scientists have
collected up to 750,000 bits of
plastic in a single square kilometer (or 1.9 million bits per square
mile) of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Plastic products can be very
harmful to marine life in the
gyre. For instance, loggerhead
sea turtles often mistake plastic
bags for jellyfish, their favorite
food. Also many marine mammals and birds, such as albatrosses, have become strangled by
the plastic rings used to hold
six-packs of soda together.
Because the Great Pacific
Garbage Patch is so far from
any country’s coastline, no
nation will take responsibility
or provide the funding to
clean it up. Many international organizations, however,
are dedicated to preventing
the patch from growing any
further.
Cleaning up marine debris is
not as easy as it sounds. Many
pieces of debris are the same
size as small sea animals, so
nets designed to scoop up
trash would catch these
creatures as well. Even if we
could design nets that would
just catch garbage, the size of
the oceans makes this job too
time-consuming to consider.
And no one can reach trash
that has sunk to the ocean
floor.
Many expeditions have traveled
through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Charles Moore, who
discovered the patch in 1997,
continues to raise awareness
through his own environmental
organization, the Algalita Marine
Research Foundation.
All the floating plastic in the
Great Pacific Garbage Patch
inspired National Geographic
Emerging Explorer David de
Rothschild and his team at
Adventure Ecology to create a
large catamaran made of plastic
bottles: the Plastiki. The sturdiness of the Plastiki displayed the
strength of plastics and the
threat they pose to the environment when they don’t decompose. In 2010, the crew successfully
navigated the Plastiki from San
Francisco, California, to Sydney,
Australia.
http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/encyclopedia/great-pacific-garbage-patch/?ar_a=1